Breadcrumbs

Are you protecting yourself or your relationship?

Common problems plaguing relationships of today are affairs, power struggles, lack of communication and loss of love. As much as it is very difficult to understand how these problems get generated, one thing is very clear that couples create their own path to crisis.

And when that happens, couples stop being themselves when with their partner. Ironically, they feel good outside their relationship – when at work or with their friends or children, but not so around their partner. This leads to a lot of unpleasant and uncomfortable interacting patterns. A major reason why this happens is because they create a wall of protection – mainly to save themselves from the stress and tension the relationship generates. Communication is the first thing which is hampered by the shield created. While some do this consciously, others do it unconsciously. It’s impossible to love someone and at the same time try to protect oneself from that someone. It’s like wanting to have the cake and eat it too. Eventually love takes a back seat. Soon the protecting practice is mirrored by the partner one is protecting oneself from. This results in total disconnect. If not addressed, the wedge between the couple increases and only becomes difficult to bridge with time.

So effectively` what happens is that when partners are together they disconnect themselves from each other and when not, they reconnect with themselves. Affairs, many times are a result of this practice. People tend to reconnect with many parts of themselves which they lost or never knew existed, thanks to an affair. The real problem here is nether the relationship one is in or one’s partner. The problem lies in not being oneself. Individuals struggling to be themselves when with one’s partner is the biggest sign of a relationship malfunction. People seldom realize this and go through a lot of pain and suffering which come from not being able to be free to be themselves in a relationship.

Instead of being someone you inherently are not, you need to focus on what has disabled you from being yourself with your partner. The reasons can be galore. But once understood, they can help safe guard a relationship from any distress rather than safe guarding yourself. Otherwise, how can you solve a problem when you don’t really know what the problem is?